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Unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the Antarctic Plateau

A paradoxical negative greenhouse effect has been found over the Antarctic Plateau, indicating that greenhouse gases enhance energy loss to space. Using 13 years of NASA satellite observations, we verify the existence of the negative greenhouse effect and find that the magnitude and sign of the effe...

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Autores principales: Sejas, Sergio A., Taylor, Patrick C., Cai, Ming
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7580794/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33102742
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41612-018-0031-y
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author Sejas, Sergio A.
Taylor, Patrick C.
Cai, Ming
author_facet Sejas, Sergio A.
Taylor, Patrick C.
Cai, Ming
author_sort Sejas, Sergio A.
collection PubMed
description A paradoxical negative greenhouse effect has been found over the Antarctic Plateau, indicating that greenhouse gases enhance energy loss to space. Using 13 years of NASA satellite observations, we verify the existence of the negative greenhouse effect and find that the magnitude and sign of the effect varies seasonally and spectrally. A previous explanation attributes this effect solely to stratospheric CO(2); however, we surprisingly find that the negative greenhouse effect is predominantly caused by tropospheric water vapor. A recently developed principle-based concept is used to provide a complete account of the Antarctic Plateau’s negative greenhouse effect indicating that it is controlled by the vertical variation of temperature and greenhouse gas absorption. Our findings indicate that unique climatological conditions over the Antarctic Plateau—a strong surface-based temperature inversion and scarcity of free tropospheric water vapor—cause the negative greenhouse effect.
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spelling pubmed-75807942020-10-22 Unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the Antarctic Plateau Sejas, Sergio A. Taylor, Patrick C. Cai, Ming NPJ Clim Atmos Sci Article A paradoxical negative greenhouse effect has been found over the Antarctic Plateau, indicating that greenhouse gases enhance energy loss to space. Using 13 years of NASA satellite observations, we verify the existence of the negative greenhouse effect and find that the magnitude and sign of the effect varies seasonally and spectrally. A previous explanation attributes this effect solely to stratospheric CO(2); however, we surprisingly find that the negative greenhouse effect is predominantly caused by tropospheric water vapor. A recently developed principle-based concept is used to provide a complete account of the Antarctic Plateau’s negative greenhouse effect indicating that it is controlled by the vertical variation of temperature and greenhouse gas absorption. Our findings indicate that unique climatological conditions over the Antarctic Plateau—a strong surface-based temperature inversion and scarcity of free tropospheric water vapor—cause the negative greenhouse effect. 2018-07-11 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC7580794/ /pubmed/33102742 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41612-018-0031-y Text en Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Sejas, Sergio A.
Taylor, Patrick C.
Cai, Ming
Unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the Antarctic Plateau
title Unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the Antarctic Plateau
title_full Unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the Antarctic Plateau
title_fullStr Unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the Antarctic Plateau
title_full_unstemmed Unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the Antarctic Plateau
title_short Unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the Antarctic Plateau
title_sort unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the antarctic plateau
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7580794/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33102742
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41612-018-0031-y
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